The Case of the Pre­ten­tious Sneakers

Lord have mer­cy, I have reached a new low in this town where mon­ey can seem like anoth­er mem­ber of the fam­i­ly: con­stant­ly dis­ap­pear­ing when it’s most need­ed, demand­ing, wor­ry­ing. For weeks, nay, months, Avery has been com­plain­ing that her sneak­ers (or as they are known in Eng­land, “train­ers”) were too flat, too small and just plain bad. I have received these fre­quent updates with a dis­tinct lack of enthu­si­asm, because every time we pop into a shoe store to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, there are no white train­ers (uni­form rules apply even to footwear), or none in Avery’s size, or too many oth­er peo­ple in line. Today, how­ev­er, instead of play­ing ten­nis, Form Four prac­ticed for Sports Day and Avery won one race and came in sec­ond in the oth­er. Ham­pered as she was by low-per­for­mance equip­ment, this seemed impres­sive. So even though we had with us (in the pelt­ing rain) one bag con­tain­ing an enor­mous bot­tle of aloe vera juice for my del­i­cate con­di­tion, one school ruck­sack con­tain­ing the paper sup­ply for a small devel­op­ing nation, one gym bag con­tain­ing a rum­pled school uni­form and the offend­ing old shoes, one ten­nis rack­et, and one pre­car­i­ous­ly-built mod­el of a Viking ship cre­at­ed entire­ly from paper, it was deemed that a shop­ping trip to Sel­f­ridges was nec­es­sary. Oh, and an umbrel­la donat­ed by my friend Susan at pick­up to shel­ter said Viking ship. And a gro­cery bag full of ingre­di­ents for spaghet­ti and meatballs.

So off we went, stop­ping so Avery could have a snack at Patis­serie Valerie and have the fun of dump­ing all these belong­ings on the floor in a wet pile. Enter Sel­f­ridges. Which hap­pens to be hav­ing its semi-annu­al “Buy me, I will change your life” sale. These words are embla­zoned on every ver­ti­cal sur­face in the store, in the slant­i­ng black and white let­ters on gray made famous by the artist Bar­bara Kruger. Are they just copy­ing her? I must find out. We stood dis­con­so­late­ly in front of the enor­mous board pro­claim­ing on what floors var­i­ous items could be found. “There! Kids on 3!” Avery shout­ed. “If I stand here long enough, will it say ‘Kids on Ground Floor?” I asked. We fought our way up three flights of esca­la­tors, through the sale crowds, past end­less dis­plays of unnec­es­sary mate­ri­al­ist fod­der. Who were all these peo­ple? I began to have mis­an­throp­ic fan­tasies about throw­ing them all over the glass walls sur­round­ing the esca­la­tor shaft, to land in the Pink dis­play of tuxe­do shirts. No mat­ter. We found the chil­dren’s area, also in sale hell, and dear read­ers, you will under­stand my cha­grin when I found that the ONLY pair of white sneak­ers left in Avery’s size was… Dolce e Gabbana.

Mind you, I don’t even own any­thing by Dolce e Gab­bana. The fact that Madon­na’s daugh­ter is decked out from head to foot in cus­tom made gar­ments by this pair of Ital­ian fash­ion­istas (or is fash­ion­is­to, if they’re men?) only adds to the glam­our. I remem­ber that Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gab­bana, who­ev­er they are in real life, caused rip­ples of fear and anx­i­ety through­out the world of peo­ple who spend mon­ey on clothes, when they broke up their love affair. But devo­tion to fash­ion knows no bounds, so they still design clothes togeth­er. And tiny chil­dren’s footwear too, appar­ent­ly. I have to admit, they’re cute. And they look very well-made. Avery was extreme­ly appre­cia­tive and feels that she might well win sev­er­al races in them. And they WERE 40% off, after all. Which makes them only twice as much as you would pay under nor­mal cir­cum­stances. What ARE nor­mal cir­cum­stances? I don’t remem­ber. Wish her luck on Wednes­day morn­ing. And hey, guess what? At least the Pra­da train­ers were all sold out in her size.